The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Monday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
6:30 a.m It’s been a while since a whole new COVID-19 variant burst onto the scene, but like a pop star with staying power, good old Omicron keeps finding new ways to reinvent itself.
A new iteration of BA.2 — BA.2.12.1 — is rapidly growing in the Northeastern US, and is already spreading in Canada. Meanwhile, scientists are keeping an eye on two other members of the crew, BA.4 and BA.5, that are causing some concern in South Africa and have been detected in several other countries.
The ability that this group of Omicron sub-variants has to continuously evolve — getting more contagious with each new mutation and finding ways to get around vaccination — has left vaccine researchers scrambling to keep up and an increasingly weary public wondering if this game of viral whack -a-mole will ever end.
Read the full story from the Star’s May Warren and Kenyon Wallace.
6:26 a.m. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has tested positive for COVID-19, she tweeted Sunday.
“Today I tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, I’m vaccinated and boosted, and I’m asymptomatic. I’ll be isolating and working remotely this week,” the Democratic governor stated.
“A reminder to all New Yorkers: get vaccinated and boosted, get tested, and stay home if you don’t feel well,” she added.
A Hochul spokesperson said the governor will “be following the guidance” on how long to isolate, without specifying the number of days. Hochul canceled a planned Monday trip to Washington, DC
She is the latest elected official to test positive for the disease as COVID-19 case numbers have been rising in New York and beyond.
6:25 a.m. Shanghai’s strict COVID-19 curbs are disrupting health care services halfway across the world, with hospitals in New York suffering a shortage of chemicals used in imaging tests — the latest example of how the city’s five-week-long lockdown is snarling global supply chains.
Health care facilities have seen shortages of an iodinated contrast medium known as Omnipaque, that’s produced at a GE Healthcare factory in Shanghai, the Greater New York Hospital Association said in a May 4 statement. The chemical agent is widely used in X-rays, radiography and CT scans.
The hospital body also warned that supplies may be curtailed by as much as 80% for the next two months even though the factory has resumed production. It recommended health care providers ration existing stock for essential use only while seeking out other suppliers and considering alternative scanning tests for patients.
A representative for GE Healthcare, the $17.7 billion unit of General Electric Co., said in an emailed response that the firm was “working around the clock to expand capacity” of the imaging chemical. “After having to close our Shanghai manufacturing facility for several weeks due to local COVID policies, we have been able to reopen and are utilizing our other global plants wherever we can,” GE Healthcare said in the email. “We are working to return to full capacity as soon as local authorities allow.”
China’s dogged pursuit of its COVID-zero strategy, exemplified in the stringent lockdown of its financial and trade hub since early April, has hobbled global supply chains and hurt companies from Tesla Inc. to Apple Inc. Critical components for PCs to smartphones and automobiles are either being produced in insufficient quantities or are stuck in a logjam at the Shanghai port, the world’s biggest container terminal.
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